A transformational journey into health and feelin' sexy!

So I’ve been pretty well down for the count the last 4 days with a terrible cold (I blame Jason! He had it first!). I asked my fellow ketards what they eat when they have a cold and the main answer I got was “broth”. Bleh. I’ve never been a big fan of broth to begin with, and I did try to add some to my regular diet to get some more sodium but I just couldn’t stomach the taste… But I had to have something to help this cold. So I decided to give egg drop soup a try. Or at least my adapted version of it (I’ve never made it before so I just kind of wing’d it). Essentially I added some chopped green onion and a teaspoon of salt to about 2 cups of chicken broth (I tried a different brand this time, it seems much better!), brought it to a boil, kept it stirring and slowly dropped some egg into it.

The result was… delicious! I’m not a soup person to begin with, but I could see myself making this on a regular basis (if only to help my sodium intake). As an added bonus, when I have some I feel a little better almost instantly 🙂

Keto Support Group

A week or two ago someone posted on the keto reddit an idea about putting together a Keto Support Group via Skype. I jumped on board, and on Monday at 7pm PST we had our first group “meeting”. There were about 6 of us (one had to leave a bit early as she wasn’t feeling well, and another arrived a bit late), and we figured we’d meet for about an hour… well, about 2 and a half hours later, we were still talking! I think it turned out really well and I really enjoyed talking to other people who can relate to the keto lifestyle. We had a pretty diverse turnout, from keto-newbies of only one or two weeks, to keto-veterans of 1 or 2 years.

Our next meeting is the same time next Monday, and we’re still looking for more people to join! If anyone is interested, feel free to comment below or add me on Skype (username is daerina).

Anyways, my weight loss appears to have stalled briefly the last few days… I’m not entirely sure if it’s due to shark week or if my head really is as heavy as it feels! Either way hopefully by next week I’ll be back on track 🙂

I’m going to consider this post to be more of a PSA about the evils of free samples in grocery stores…

I was craving some chinese food, but unfortunately it’s not exactly Jason’s favourite so I decided to put off ordering any until one night when he’s working late… so we wandered over to Safeway to see if anything looked appetizing, and I saw they had ginger beef in the deli. I figured I’d give it a try and asked for a sample, she gave me 3 pieces and I ate them as we walked around picking up our groceries. I stopped for a moment to check the nutrition info on MyFitnessPal, and found that I had just eaten 10g of carbs in those 2 and a half little pieces…

Word to the wise… look it up before you eat it up! Suffice it to say I was a bit more limited on what to have for dinner, so I opted for steak. Nice, carbless, delicious steak.

In other news, Jason bought me an advent calendar for December! He went through the trouble of looking at the carb counts on all of the calendars until he found the one with the fewest carbs per chocolate. It just so happened to be a Lindt calendar (I love Lindt!) at 3g of carbs per chocolate, which I can definitely live with! Today’s chocolate was even chocolate hazelnut, which is my absolute favourite!

I’ve noticed lately that my calorie count has been rather…. low.Like, really low. I’m aiming for 1200 calories per day but I’m averaging probably somewhere around 800, with many days rounding out at about 600. The thing is, I’m eating. And I’m eating until I’m full… stuffed, even.

Although I learned quite awhile ago that starvation mode is a myth, this still didn’t really sound right to me, so I consulted the all-knowing /r/keto to see what they had to say… and it turns out, that’s okay! Basically, your body will tell you when you have had enough to eat. And while in ketosis, your body is burning your body fat as fuel. While there is a limit to how much the body can burn and contribute to your daily energy, some bodies are simply better at it than others. The key is to listen to your stomach, it will tell you when it’s had enough. If you’re sated, you’re sated, and there’s no point in overeating if you don’t need to. So… I’ll stay where I’m at, it does seem really weird to be eating so little, but my body knows best! 🙂

Ketosis, SimplifiedA few days ago, a fellow keto’er wrote up an article about ketosis, in a very simplified way. There was some demand for an infographic based on the article, so I figured I’d give it a try. I realize the graphics should tell more of the story, but unfortunately there aren’t a lot of figures and numbers to work with, and to make it less wordy I’d have to really diminish the information in the article. I tried my best to break it down into bite-sized chunks that would be easy to follow on an infographic. So… for all you folks out there who are new to keto, here’s your chance to learn all about how it works in a nice, simple image.

I’ve been struggling with whether or not to post my current weight on here, although I’m sure it isn’t hard to figure out… but I think I will leave it for a bit longer. But I will say that today marked a very important milestone. 🙂 I promised myself when I reached this milestone I would buy myself a reward, and so I did! (look right)

For those that don’t know, “Keep Calm and Keto On” is sort of a Keto “motto”. I don’t know the real reason behind it, but I can assume that it’s probably because sometimes battling carb addiction and the inevitable road bumps that come along with a diet that is as far from mainstream as you can get can be a little bit frustrating, and when that happens you just have to suck it up and… keto on!

Sometimes, for some people, there comes a point where your clothes no longer fit, you hate how you look, and the idea of going out and buying a new pair of jeans that you can actually do up seems just… ridiculous. I don’t want to be this size, why the heck would I go and spend good money a pair of jeans to fit someone I don’t want to be? When it comes down to it, you can either admit defeat, go buy bigger, fatter clothes… or you can become the person you want to be.

I reached that point several months ago, I didn’t have any jeans that fit anymore, in fact the only pants I could fit into were jeggings and yoga pants (I even remember having to wear yoga pants when I had to appear in court as a character witness several months back because I didn’t have any dress pants that fit)… thankfully, I live in Vancouver where everyone and their dog wears yoga pants… everywhere, all the time… so it’s not that bad. But still, it would be nice to wear something that isn’t stretchy from time to time.

But I am proud to say, that as I sit here, typing this post… I am wearing jeans! The non-stretchy kind! It may seem silly to most, but it is in fact a small victory for me 🙂

Goal jeans! I WILL wear you again!!

Speaking of jeans, a future victory I hope to achieve (though it probably won’t be for several months yet) is to fit into my most favourite pair of jeans I have ever owned. I bought them when I was 19 and about 57lbs lighter than I am now, and unfortunately I haven’t fit into them in years. It’s actually kind of a funny story… I wanted a new pair of jeans, so I went over to the mall, tried on a few pairs, and when I tried this particular pair on they looked so damn good I thought to myself “I don’t care how much these cost, I must have them!!”. So I naively walked up to the cashier to pay for them without looking at the tag, and nearly had a heart attack when the bill was over $200 for a single pair of jeans… I have now dubbed them my goal jeans, and I will wear them again someday!!

Anyways, that’s about it for today other than to say it seems I have found my keto stride and am making good progress. I have lost 4.2lbs in the last week and hopefully by next week I will have reached both the 25% mark, as well as the 20lbs down mark (which means reward time!).

Fatburger… is as good for keto as it sounds!You would think that a burger joint with the word “fat” in it and a high fat diet going hand in hand would be a no-brainer, however… I am still epicly impressed with Fatburger! One night we were feeling a bit lazy so we figured we’d have some burgers. I was getting a little tired of McDonald’s crap (especially because it’s literally in the same building where we live), and since I’d never been there before, we decided to give Fatburger a try. Once I read through their menu and they said that you can order any burger with no bun and they will wrap it in lettuce for you, and add on to that that they have awesome burger additions such as guacamole and egg… I was sold! I ordered the old style bacon cheddar burger with egg and no bun… and this is what I got: (top right)

I know the image quality is not the best, but they practically made a bun out of lettuce, wrapped it in a nice little paper wrap so you can hold it… it was actually edible as a burger instead of the usual bunless burger where you have to drag out the old fork and knife! And aside from presentation, it was delicious! Definitely going to be visiting fat burger again!

Fail Muffins 😦Someone on /r/keto posted a link to a blueberry muffin recipe the other day, and it sounded pretty good! Since I’m not a huge fan of blueberries, I decided to modify it and turn it into a chocolate strawberry muffin recipe. I added 1 tbsp of unsweetened cocoa powder, 2tbsp of chocolate protein powder, replaced the stevia with 2 tbsp of Splenda, and replaced the unsweetened almond milk with unsweetened chocolate almond milk. And of course, replaced the blueberries with strawberries. The whole apartment smelled amazing for the entire time they were in the oven, and I was super excited to try them… and then I pulled them out of the oven and…. this is what they looked like: (look left)

They definitely didn’t look much like muffins… and somehow despite adding chocolate almond milk, chocolate protein powder, and cocoa powder, they had absolutely no chocolate taste to them at all. They were a bit too dense, but to be honest I’ve found that to be a trend when trying to bake keto foods with almond and/or coconut flour… unfortunately they just don’t rise the same way that regular flour does. They tasted just okay… edible, but not something I’d make again. Even my cat took it upon himself to toss one into his water dish 😦

Progress ReportSo this week I am officially back on my way to my goal! Not only have I lost 2lbs, but I was finally able to beat my rowing time from October 28th (2000m @ 11:49)… twice! 2000m @ 11:22 on November 13th, and 11:15 on November 15th. I think my times may begin to go up for the next week or two as I’m going to try and focus on increasing the distance before I need to take a break. This usually leaves me winded and impacts the over all time because I need to take more breaks after my initial “burst”, but I think if I can keep pushing it, eventually I will be able to do the entire 2000m in a single shot without needing breaks at all (which ideally will give me an awesome overall time).

I’ve decided to give myself a small reward once I reach 20lbs down, I’ll be sure to post a picture when I do! 🙂